A rare waterspout popped up early Tuesday evening on Kentucky Lake near the north end of Land Between the Lakes.

There were no injuries or property damage reported from the waterspout, although some boaters were nearby as it occurred and got a rare sight.

Amateur video shared with the National Weather Service caught the rope-shaped waterspout as it spun along the lake, part of the Tennessee River, toward the shoreline before fizzling out.

A waterspout is essentially a tornado that occurs over a body of water. They are far more common on the ocean, particularly in places like the Gulf Coast and Florida Keys.

Sam Shamburger, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Nashville, said the waterspout happened around 6:50 p.m. Tuesday near Fairdealing which is about 30 miles north of Dover, Tenn.

"There had been some widely scattered showers and a few thunderstorms moving through that area late yesterday," Shamburger told The Leaf-Chronicle, "and one of them, I suspect at least, moved over the lake, where you had the warmer waters of the lake coinciding with the updraft of the storm, creating the waterspout."

"It's very unusual for that to happen in our part of the world. But strangely enough, we did have another waterspout earlier this year on Dale Hollow Lake near Byrdstown, Tennessee," Shamburger said.

"In our area, a more typical type of thing to happen is for a tornado already in progress over land, to move over a lake or river, but this is kind of a different phenomenon caused by different atmospheric factors, with a waterspout actually forming over water."